My Love, My Life
by ttfan111robstar1
Summary: Diana Reid muses on her Alzheimer's and sends her son something to remind him that she is still here even when she is mentally gone. Inspired by the song "My Love, My Life" From Mamma Mia 2.


The Alzheimer's is insufferable.

Every day I lose a bit of myself to it, and I recognize that my periods of lucidity will grow shorter until they don't exist at all. Losing myself to schizophrenia was one thing. I always knew I would come back from that. But this… This was different. I stood to lose everything I ever cared about, and everything that mattered.

William. How many times had I wished I could just forget what happened to tear us apart? How many times did I long to just forget him leaving our family, or just his leaving in general? So many times. More than I can count. But now that it's actually happening, outside of my control… I fear it. I fear losing him now, because I lose a piece of myself. But he is not the biggest thing I will lose.

Spencer.

My sweet son… The one who stood by me through it all. He couldn't always visit, but he always told me about his day, sent me letters. He did not forget me, even when I forgot him due to my illness. Before, my periods of schizophrenia were brief. But now… Now I would lose them too. Who was to say if my period of lucidity from the Alzheimers would coincide with a period of schizophrenia and make a seamless transition between times I was gone, creating one long stretch of loss of identity. And worst of all, my son had to watch all of this. He had seen so much in his life, but I knew better than anyone that this would be the worst thing he had ever seen.

I am at the sanitarium now. Bennington. The one Spencer put me in at the age of eighteen. It had been a while since Spencer last came to see me. The Alzheimers is setting in now, becoming real. The first time I went away didn't scare me much. Years of doing that with Schizophrenia made it common place. But seeing the look in his eyes after I came back, and he told me that I had forgotten him for a moment… That sent the worst kind of fear through me. Fear and guilt and anger and regret. They made a cocktail of emotion for me.

And so, a few weeks after my son's last visit, I am in my room. I page through a scrapbook. Photos lay on pages, some more worn than others. The images pass by as turn the pages. Reflections of me, of William, of Spencer. Their faces fill my mind. I get to a picture of Spencer and I. My index finger brushes against it. I remember that day. A rare lucid day, long after William left us. I had taken Spencer to the park. He played chess with me. The smile on his face was something that will be burned into my mind, lucid or not. I feared for him out there, being back where the end of my life seemed to begin. But his smile made me less afraid.

I run a finger down my son's cheek in that picture. There are so many things I wish I could tell him. A lifetime with him, forever with him, would not be enough for me to say all of the things I need to say to him, all the things I want to say. There isn't enough time in the world for me to get out everything he needs to hear. I want to give him something to hold onto when I am away in my mind. I know he will never admit it, but he needs the reassurance. He doesn't want to let me go. What he doesn't understand is that I will never let go.

A mother's love is vast and bottomless. No illness, no matter how tenacious, can break the incredible love a mother has for her child. Even when I was far away as I could be in my delusions, I could feel the strength of that love. It beat inside of me like the loudest drum. It would not be drowned out by illness. It lived, because I did. Nothing can take away, or break, or defile that love. It is too intense and too mountainous to be scratched. A mother will always love her child, no matter what happens to her or to them. It is a connection and a lifeline that time and distance cannot overtake. It has been that way for me every single day.

I carefully remove that picture from my album, and I replace it with a different one in the book. I flip over the photograph, and I ponder what to say. But then I was reminded of a second photo that he would need to see. I flip through the pages until I find it. A picture of myself holding him as a baby. There was a smile on my face, the one that only comes from a mother holding her child for the first time.

Our lives are remembered by the gifts we give our children. I have always believed that, and I always will. I want to give my son the gift of knowing that I do not forget him. That I still love him, despite what is happening in my mind. And so, on the back of the photos, I begin to scrawl something. Song lyrics that remind me of the occasion. One Half on one photo, and the other on the next. I put the photos into an envelope with a note, and I send it.

Spencer Reid awoke a few days later to a letter from his mother. He opened it, and looked inside. There was a small note inside that read, "For when I'm not here. Look at these pictures and behind them, and know that I am there."

And so he pulled out the pictures, and smiled at the two. But he looked at the back of them, and then stacked one upon the other to read the text in full. When he did, he smiled.

With these, his mother was never gone. Not really.

**Author's Note: If you all were wondering what Diana wrote, it was the lyrics from "My Love, My Life" From Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!. Just the ones from the second chorus. I would paste it here, and I almost did, but fanfiction gives you hell if you post song lyrics, so you'll just have to listen to it for yourselves. I hope you all enjoyed this.**


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